Obama looks to Brown to help lead the way

Barack Obama. Photo / AP

Barack Obama is reaching out to Gordon Brown to help deliver an international climate change treaty and steer the world towards economic recovery in the face of a fiercely protectionist mood in the United States and elsewhere that could plunge the world into a full-scale depression.

The British Prime Minister will be the first European leader to meet the President today and, on Thursday, he has the honour of addressing both houses of Congress.

Although he is certain to be well received, Brown will be speaking to politicians whose main focus is on saving American jobs first.

Brown arrives just as the President is engaging in a battle to transform the US economy with its huge dependence on foreign oil while delivering ambitious healthcare and education reforms to restore US competitiveness.

Obama is also fighting special interest groups and lobbyists who want to derail his US$3.6 trillion ($7.3 trillion) Budget plan.

The President is coming under tremendous pressure from unions and industry to protect US jobs by erecting barriers to trade. Obama may find an ally in the British Prime Minister, much as George W Bush needed an accomplice in Tony Blair for his military adventures in Iraq.

In his weekly radio address on Sunday, Obama delivered a populist blast at entrenched Washington interests, challenging his domestic opponents: "I know these steps won't sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they're gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this: So am I."

While focused on economic recovery, the two leaders are also pushing aggressively for an international climate agreement which they hope will provide a new engine of growth in a global low-carbon economy.

The fear is that next month's G20 summit in London could degenerate into a disastrous finger-pointing row over trade between older industrialised countries and the new economies of Asia and Latin America, making a climate change treaty even more difficult to achieve at the Copenhagen summit in December.

British diplomats were in high-level meetings at the White House last week to discuss climate issues and the US is promising to negotiate a new climate treaty "in a robust way" after all but ignoring the issue for the past decade.

Brown will use his speech to Congress to seek to persuade American politicians to endorse plans for a "grand bargain" at the G20 summit.

Yesterday, Brown met European leaders for an emergency economic meeting in Brussels and pledged to deliver a "clear message" to Obama about European commitment to "a global grand bargain" he said was "vitally urgent to deal with the challenges of the world economy".

Writing in The Sunday Times, Brown cloaked his agenda for his Washington visit in familiar rhetoric. "There is no international partnership in recent history that has served the world better than the special relationship between Britain and the United States."

The Prime Minister argues that the 21st century "global new deal" he wants to achieve will require public spending on a huge worldwide scale.

He also hopes that Obama's vast US economic recovery package that was finally signed into law last week will help give international political backing for the British Government's moves towards stimulating the economy by increasing the money supply.

- INDEPENDENT